Monday, December 19, 2016

The Post-Movie World

Film critic Manohla Dargis supplies some hope:“The American movie industry has absolutely changed, and it’s very different, and we can regret some of those changes and we can also say, ‘It is what it is and let’s move on,’ [but] let’s actually look at the work versus anguishing that it’s not 1957. I personally don’t want to go back to 1957….The Godfather is one of my favorite movies, absolutely, but There Will Be Blood is also a masterpiece and one of the greatest movies of the last 50 years, and that was made by an independent company and released by a studio — so masterpieces still get made. It’s just different.”
Film historian Mark Harris, however, sees little but darkness:“When you say, ‘Movies aren’t dead because Moonlight,’ you’re not really answering the question. Because the statement is not, ‘Nobody knows how to make a good movie anymore.’ It’s, ‘Good movies are now made almost exclusively either outside of or in spite of the system,’ and that is a really meaningful change. It’s been a change for long enough now so that there are a generation of young moviegoers who did not really grow up knowing anything else.”